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Aviation History
1996
1996 - 0092.PDF
A~JJJ . __—, -.__ __ _ . —• — tormy passages * iir \'uigiiii~F28 - difficult because vfnmway tleteriorttlion For a nation dependent on air transport, Papua New Guinea has many problems to overcome. PAULPHEUN/CAIRNS MIDWAY THROUGH LAST De cember, Papua New Guinea's (PNG) entire air-traffic-services system and, consequently, all air-carrier flying had to be shut down for 5h. This was not because of industrial action, but because the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) lost communication between its seven centres, and could no longer guarantee traffic separation, weather and NOTAM information, search-and-rescue co ordination, or other vital services. On that occasion, the cause was damage to a critical telecommunications repeater station by villagers demanding A$50,000 ($37,000) "com pensation" for the presence of the station on a remote nearby mountaintop. On another, at one of the country's few night-flying-capable airports, the runway lights were stolen. When they were replaced, the airport could still not be used at night because the DCA could not afford fuel to mow the grass around them. Incoming international passengers in the Port Moresby Customs area have found them selves inhaling tear gas, the byproduct of a rob bery in progress at an adjacent bank, and violent robberies at the airport are increasingly com mon. The national airline has been forced to fund much of the redevelopment of an emer gency airport required to service the volcano- devastated regional centre of Rabaul, because the Government has no funds. Even the Prime Minister's aircraft has had to be kept away from airports where fuel companies have withdrawn the Government Flying Unit's credit. Dozens of such incidents and continuing problems illustrate the tenuous state of PNG's capacity to maintain a basic aviation infrastruc ture, in a country which is dependent to an almost unique degree on aviation for its eco nomic life and the provision of essential ser vices. That dependence has lately been heightened by the virtual closure of the main highway to inland centres by armed villagers conducting "road blocks" at which they collect a "toll", a problem now so serious that insurers will no longer underwrite road cargoes. Some population centres can only receive supplies by air. This, like similar problems affecting avia tion, is not a civil-unrest problem, but a law- and-order quandary requiring only positive police action, which in turn requires politicians to instigate it. "Unfortunately, it is becoming a major industry in some electorates," says a despairing expatriate. An airline source says: "The tragedy is that, although in the first 30 post-war years leading up to independence, an excellent infrastructure was established despite enormous geographical difficulties, along with a core of well-trained civil-aviation technical staff in all areas, subse quent funding has either been mismanaged or simply been inadequate to sustain either." A year ago, the DCA published a detailed cat alogue of measures which it thought it would have to implement in the face of continued lack of funds. These included the curtailing and/or closure of air-traffic-control (ATC) services, closure of provincial airports and, possibly, of major airports because of a lack of maintenance; curtailment of airworthiness and operations surveillance because of staff shortages to the extent that the airlines would be virtually self- regulating; and advice to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) that the country could not meet its international commitments in several safety aspects. The DCA also noted that: • maps and charts were becoming unavailable; • rescue and fire-fighting services were unlike ly to be available in emergencies because of unserviced equipment; • many radio-navigation aids had already been out of service for periods exceeding outages allowable under ICAO rules; • expatriate contract staff were becoming almost impossible to recruit because of the devaluation of the national currency, bureau cratic obstacles to employment, and law-and- order concerns. Current NOTAMs and preflight informa tion bulletins indicate that, in most areas of operation, the situation has now worsened, and 38 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 10 - 16 January 1996
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